Raw and analyzed data for manuscript "Cold plasma for sustainable control of hygienically relevant biofilms. The interaction of plasma distance and exposure time"

Abstract

Managing biofilms on the surface of materials is one of the most important public health challenges. One of the possible approaches could be the treatment of biofilms with cold plasma as a sustainable and effective method to destroy biofilms. The aim of this study was to analyse the efficacy of a new open-source cold plasma device especially adapted for treatment with low power consumption of 35 W. We tested the reduction of bacterial cells in biofilms of E. coli, S. aureus and P. aeruginosa after treatment with different exposure times and distance regimes. The results show great antibacterial potential in the form of distinct zones of inhibition on solid growth media. In addition, analysis of biofilm efficacy shows significant differences between bacterial cells, suggesting that Gramme-positive S. aureus is less susceptible to plasma treatment than Gramme-negative E. coli and P. aeruginosa. The results show that increasing the exposure time and decreasing the distance between the nozzle and the biofilm decreases the number of cells in the biofilm (p < 0.05). However, the combination of close distance and long exposure time resulted in synergistic effects in bacterial reduction. We demonstrated a reduction of up to 6.6 CFU cm² for E. coli at a distance of 1 mm and an exposure time of 60 seconds. All these indicate that the new cold plasma jet device can be an important key to ensure surface hygiene and numerous applications in medicine and engineering are possible.